23 GOINGS ON ABOUT TOWN Geneva (the birthplace of Rousseau); with MIOU-MlOU, Jean-Luc Bldeau, and Raymond Bussières In French. (Metro Cinema, Dec 27 ) JULES AND JIM (1962 )-François Truffau1's cele- bration of bohemian life In France and Ger- many in the years of artistic ferment between the First World War and the Second. The Austrian, Jules (Oskar Werner), and the Frenchman, .Jim (Henri Serre)-the sort of young artists who grow up into something else-have a peaceful friendship But when they are with Catherine (Jeanne Moreau), they feel alive, anything may happen. She's the catalyst, the troublemaker, the source of despair as well as the source of joy, an en- chantress, she's also a fanatic, an db olutist, and a little crazy. Determined to live as fully as a man, she claims equality while using every feminine wile to increase her power posi- tion She's the independent, intellectual modern woman satirized by Strindberg (who also adored her) Catherine marries Jules, who can't hold her, and, in despair, he en- courages Jim's interest in her- "that way, she'll still be ours." She insists on her freedom to leave men, but if they leave her (as Jim does) she is as devastated and as helpless as any clinging vine (perhaps more devastated- she can't even ask for sympathy). Elliptical, full of wit and radiance, this is the best movie ever made about what most of us think of as the Scott Fitzgerald period (though the film begins much earlier); Truffaut doesn't linger- nothing is held too long, nothing is over- stated, or even stated He explores the medium and plays with it He overlaps scenes; uses fast cutting (in the manner of "Breathless") and leaping continuity (in the manner of "Zero for Conduct "), changes the size and shape of the images (as Griffith did); pa uses for Jeanne Moreau to sing a song (Bor- IS Bassiak's "Le Tourbillon") Throughout, Georges Delerue's music is part of the atmo- sphere It's so evocative that if you listen to it on the phonograph it brings back emotions and image , such as JIm and Catherine's daughter rolling on a hill Adapted by Truffaut and Jean Gruault from Henri-Pierre Roché's autobIographical novel with some additional material from his later work, "Two English Girls" (which Truffaut filmed in 1972) Cinematograph) by Raoul Coutard With Marie Dubois as Thérèse, who smokes like a steam engine, and Bassiak, as Albert Condemned when it opened in the United States by the (Catholic) Legion of Decency. In French (Bleecker St Cinema; Dec 31- J an 1. ) KAGEMUSHA (1980, "The Shadow Warrior")- Warfare is treated dispassionately in this epic film in color by Kurosawa, whIch IS set during the wars of the clans in sixteenth-cen- tury Japan (the period just before the country was unified) Kurosawa seems to be saying that wisdom dictates caution, securi- ty, stasis, but that to be alive is to be subject to impulse, chaos The film's style. i ceremo- nial rather than dramatic; it's not battle that Kurosawa is interested in here but forma- tions in battle regalia. He appears to see war as part of the turmoil of life, and he asks us simply to observe what he shows us Perhaps he thInks that this way the horror will reach us at a deeper level. But he's also in love with the aesthetics of warfare-he's a schoolboy setting up armies of perfect little soldiers and smiling at the patterns he has devised. These two sets of feelings may have neutralized "Kagemusha" -put it at a remove and made it somewhat abstract. The film seems fixated on mountains, triangles, and threes. Tatsuya N akadai plays the warlord known as The Mountain, and he also plays the thieving peasant who has been condemned to death but whose life is spared so that he can serve as the lord's double Written by Kurosawa and Masato Ide In Japanese (Bleecker St. Cinema; Dec 28.) LEAP INTO THE VOID (1979)- The Italian director Marco Bellocchio ("Fists in the Pocket," "China Is Near") has a feral sense of the ridiculous and a snake charmer's style. This film is poised between farce and tragedy, and he keeps it in slippery chiaroscuro-it all might be taking place In a dark dream. Mi- chel Piccoli gives a mesmerizing performance as an Italian judge who's a craven fraud, a dIstant cousin to the characters W. C Fields S-M-T-W-T-F-S I I 1 22 \ 23 , 24 125 26 27 28 29 30 31 t I used to play Anouk Aimée is the judge's older sister, a menopausdl virgin who has begun to rebel ThIs film about family entanglements and the functions of madness IS perverse, horrifying, and funny. With Mi- chele Placido, as a dashing, bearded outlaw (and sociopath), and the director's small son, Piergiorgio Wntten by Bellocchio, Piero Na- toli, and Vlncenzo Cerami In Italian. (11/29/82) (Carnegie Hall Cinema) A LETTER TO THREE WIVES (1949)-Joseph L Man- kiewicz won Academy Awards for Best Screen- play and Best Director for thi atirical comedy on American ocial and marital con- ventions The letter is from the town seduc- tress informing the three wives that she has taken away one of their husbands: as each threatened wife reviews her marriage, we get at best, a sharp, frequently hilarious look at suburbia, and, at worst, a slick series of bright remarks Mankiewicz coaxed good per- formances out of Jeanne Crain and Linda Darnell, and the others certainly didn't need coaxing-Paul Douglas is pretty close to magnificent, and Ann Sothern, Kirk Douglas, Florence Bates, Thelma Ritter, and Connie Gilchrist are first-rate. Also with Barbara Lawrence, Jeffrey Lynn, and Hobart Cava- naugh, and narration by Celeste Holm From a storv by John Klempner (Regency, Dec 30-Jan. 1.) THE MIRACLE OF MORGAN'S CREEK (1944)-lt's wartime, and Betty Hutton is the overenthu- siastic girl who dates a soldier and produces sextuplets This is one of Preston Sturges's surreal-sla pstick-sa tire-conni ption-fi t com- edies and part of our great crude heritage The picture was held up a year because of censorship problems, and you'll know why With Eddie Bracken, Diana Lynn, William Demarest Porter Hall, Esther Howard, J Farrell MacDonald as the Sheriff, Jimmy Conlin as the Mayor, and, carried over from "The Great McGinty," Brian Donlevy as the Governor, and Akim Tamiroff as the Boss (Remade as "Rock-A-Bye Baby" in 1958) (Theatre 80 St. Marks; Dec. 30 ) My FAVORITE YEAR-The year is 1954, when SId Caesar was the king of live TV comedy, and this movie is a fictional treatment of life backstage during the days when many SOOD- to-be-famous writers worked on his shows, brainstorming together As the brawny, truculent King Kaiser, Joe Bologna suggests iln introverted ox, and Peter O'Toole is King's guest star from Hollywood-the no- torious womanizing boozer Alan Swann, who is part John Barrymore and part Errol Flynn Bologna has an authentic boss-comic aura, and O'Toole plays Swann with a funky daring ') A t 11l.l that is sImply astounding. ThI" show-bu ine s farce is the first film directed by Richard Benjamin, and it's a creak) job of moviemak- ing, but it has a bubbling spirit. Bill Macy, Lainie Kazan, Cameron Mitchell, and Anne De Salvo all have a crack at fresh material Also with Mark Linn-Baker, JessIca Harper. Selma Diamond, Adolph Green, Lou Jacobi, Tony DI Beneditto, Gloria Stuart, and Basil Hoffman From a terrific script by Norman Steinberg (who appears in a bIt as. Sandy) and Dennis Palumbo (10/4/82) (Quad CIn- ema, 57th St Playhouse, Olympia Quad. and Embassy.) My UNIVERSITIES (1940)-ln this third film of the Mark DonskOl trilogy, based on the memoirs of Maxim Gorky, the young hero, Alexei (now played, less successfully, by Y Valberg), goes to work in a bakery, where the men go out on strike, he mingles with revolutionaries and intellectuals, and becomes, at last, the writer we know as Maxim Gorky This lyric, epic group of films is the only work in movie his- tory that is roughly comparable to SatyajiL Ray's Apu trilogy, however, Don koi falls into pompousness in the third film and the joyous revolutionar) spirit seems programmed, while Ray soars With Stephan Kaynkov as the bakery boss Semyonov In Russian (Film Forum, Dec 26-27) NEW YORK. NEW YORK (1977)-An honest failure This United Artists big-budget musical film, directed by Martin Scorsese, suffers from too many conflicting intentions Scorsese works within the artifices of forties movie-musical romances and stylizes the sets in order to em- phasize the shot-on-a-soundstage look Evok- Ing the movie past, he's trying to get at the dark side that was left out of the old cliché plots. But the improvIsational, Cassavetes- like psychodrama that develops between the stars (Robert De Niro and Llza Minnelli) eem hollow and makes us uneasy, and sequences go on covering the same uncertain ground; the director seems to be feeling hIS way through a forest of possibilities (he shot a much longer film and then cut it down to d hundred and thirty- even minutes) The effect is of desperately talented people giving off bad vibes De Niro plays a restless hip- ster, a tenor-sax player who's frustrated in the big-band era-he's already into the progressive bop that's not yet accepted. Min- nelli is d big-band singer who becomes popu- lar with a wide audience through records and in musical movies. The story is about their meeting at a VJ Day celebration, their mar- riage, its dissolution, and their diverging mu- sical paths Though his role lacks depth and likability, De Niro, sleek and handsome and jumpy, brings it a locked-in, hotheaded in- tensity that almost holds the picture togeth- er-for the first half, anyway But the story loses momentum once the girl gets pregnant. Trying to be subdued, Minnelli seems some- what dazed-openmoutbed and vacuous and unpleasantly overripe She pushes her scenes, in her hyper way, she's as false as Julie An- drews. Her two big numbers ("But the World Turns Round" and the title song) are, how- ever, in their own wildly hysterical show-biz terms, smashing (and she's in superb voice) With Diahnne Abbott as the Harlem Club singer, Lionel Stander, Barry Prim us, Mary Kay Place Le.nnv GaInes, George Memmoli, and George Auld, who gives a good, sour per- formance as the jaundiced band leader and also dubs De Niro's sax. In addition to some mellow big-band standards, there are new songs by John Kander and Fred Ebb The screenplay started with Earl Mac Rauch, then Mardik Martin, the cast, and others worked on it The cinematograph) is by Laszlo Kovacs; IrvIng Lerner and Marcia Lucas were the edItors. (The film is dedicated to Lerner, who died during the final editing stages.) (Bleecker St. Cinema, Dec 26.) THE NIGHT OF THE HUNTER (1955)-Despite its peculiar overtones of humor this is one of the most frightening movies ever made (and tru- ly frightening movies become classics of a kind). Robert Mitchum is the murderous, sex"'"Ûbsessed, hymn-singing soul-saver wIth hypnotic powers, and his terrified new wife (Shelley Winters), who has a boy and a little girl from an earlier marriage, becomes his fervent disciple. He is something of a Pied Piper In reverse: adults trust him, children try to escape The two kids' flight from the